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I don't know about ion concentrations. . .spores have been shown to last for years [decades] in distilled water. The EDTA might be of some benefit for long term storage, though, as it has an anti-proliferative effect on bacteria. Standard TE buffer should work fine for long term storage of spores. What would be more interesting is if it could be used for some of the more finicky long term *mycelial* cultures, as they would certainly be more influenced by pH, ionic strengths, etc. My instinct would be to stay away from the EDTA in that case, and just use Tris [but who knows].No reason why TE should work any worse than water for LT spore storage that I can think of.

I'm just wondering what it is about water that makes syringes short lived. If distilled water works well for storage, than it may be that there are some ions that affect the spores. EDTA works for divalent cations, which is why it works so well for long term storage of DNA in solution. Spores are not DNA, and I don't know what kind of conditions they need. I think you are right when you say that mycelial cultures are much more susceptible to solution pH.